My Friends

Things I hate - part 16 of 100 (choosing races in GRAN TURISMO 5)

What a retardedly tedius process this is. I'm talking about the process of choosing races from the different available tracks you've unlocked.

When you click on a race, if your current car doesn't meet the requirements for that race (be it having a car with front-wheel drive, or a Japanese car, what have you), a menu pops up telling you that your current vehicle doesn't meet the qualifications to enter that race. So you have to then load the meticulously long loading screen as you "enter" your garage and sort through your cars to find one that fits. What an unnecessarily laborious process. Why couldn't they just do it this way:

You should be able to click a race, and if your current car doesn't meet the criteria, how about a little menu pops up giving you a list of your cars you do own that meets that requirement? Why is that so hard? Also, what's up with this process of "equipping" cars prior to races? Why do I have to watch that stupid intro that I can't skip of my car coming towards me Batman style? (Ok, it wouldn't be stupid if I could choose to skip it).

Or....if you want to do the video game equivalent of object-oriented "race choosing," have it be so that whatever car I currently have "equipped," I can quickly and easily SEE which races I qualify for. You can do this by either highlighting races on the menu that I'm eligible for, or, give me a submenu that'll just give me a text list of races I can enter.

Anyway, I'm not criticizing the game itself, just this one single aspect of it.

The entire game in

general provides frustrating and unpolished user experiences. Unfortunately, highly technical people don't understand user experience design very well so big missteps like this can come up really easily. From the 30-40 min game install or the long loading times or the fact that if you go in to the lobby to find an online match unlike say COD the game lacks an automated matchmaking program to find good matches for you, etc. The list where obvious fixes that could be added is HUGE. It makes it hard to believe that this game has been under development for 5 or 6 years. But the graphics and the racing when you get past all the crud is pretty damn cool which makes it all the more frustrating.